Annual Report 2007 Compiled

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Contents

Executive Reports

OSGeo in 2007

Welcome to the first edition of the OSGeo Annual Report -- a lot happened in 2007 and this document brings together highlights from across the spectrum of OSGeo activities. Nearly 50 reports from dozens of different authors and communities were contributed.

OSGeo has continued to grow, here are a few statistics to help show the magnitude of development during last year.

  • 1st OSGeo branded FOSS4G conference hosted 720+ attendees
  • 3 new volumes of the OSGeo Journal, 44 articles and over 70 contributors
  • 5 new projects entered incubation (14 total)
  • 6 Local Chapters were officially approved (9 in total) and a total 20+ Local Chapters have been started
  • 7 initial Foundation Sponsors
  • ~\$160,000 in sponsorship collected
  • 100+ mailing lists, 13,300+ subscribers
  • 6,000,000+ lines of code, representing 1,400+ years of effort across all projects
  • Dozens of presentations, workshops and events around the world!
  • Web site statistics (May-Dec, no robots/worm traffic reported):
    • 147,000 unique visitors (54\% increase),
    • 284,000 visits (51\% increase),
    • 1,502,508 pages (46\% increase),
    • 7,588,049 hits (80\% increase),
    • 140.71GB bandwidth
    • Portions of website translated into 13 different languages

Throughout the following reports you will learn more about the projects and teams that made all this happen. It has been an incredible year to watch and a great challenge to keep up with all that has developed.

This is also your invitation to join in. You will find that many of the reports identify specific areas where you can help. Links to all our projects and their mailing lists are available on the main OSGeo.org website.

I hope you enjoy the articles and I look forward to this report next year as we continue to sail through the exciting and uncharted open source geospatial world.

Sincerely, Tyler

[NOTE: The next edition of the OSGeo Journal will be back to normal, including Case Studies, Project Introductions and more.

Board of Directors Report 2007

January

  • ILWIS GIS Software Migrates to Open Source
  • MapGuide Open Source 1.1.0 Released
  • FOSS4G in Victoria, Canada, September 24-27, 2007
  • GDAL/OGR 1.4.0 Released
  • GeoTools 2.3.0 Released

February

  • OSGeo Celebrates 1st Anniversary
  • FOSS4G 2007 Call for Workshops Reminder
  • OpenLayers 2.3 Released
  • MapServer 4.10.1 Released
  • MOSS4G Project Announcement
  • FOSS4G 2007 Call for Workshops

March

  • OSGeo Accepted for Google Summer of Code
  • MapGuide Open Source helps San Francisco protect the urban forest
  • QGIS and FDO Enter OSGeo Incubation
  • MapGuide Open Source Graduates Incubation

April

  • deegree day 2007 – Call for Papers
  • OSGeo Welcomes Sixteen Students for Google Summer of Code
  • FOSS4G 2007 Call for Presentations

May

  • AWare Systems to extend LibTiff library with support for the new BigTIFF format
  • OSGeo Journal Volume 1 Now Available
  • Seeking Consultants and Service Organizations

June

  • GDAL/OGR 1.4.2 Released
  • FOSS4G 2007 Call for Presentations Closes THIS WEEK
  • Quantum GIS 0.8.1 Released
  • Journal Submissions for Peer Review

July

  • FOSS4G 2007 Early Bird Registration Ends FRIDAY
  • GRASS GIS releases version 6.2.2

August

  • Ominiverdi Desktop LiveCD 2007.1 Released
  • FOSS4G Program Finalized - 1 month to go!
  • Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software - Call for Nominations
  • FOSS4G 2008 Awarded to Cape Town, South Africa
  • OSGeo Board Election Results

September

  • Steve Lime Wins Sol Katz GFOSS Award
  • MapServer 5.0 Released
  • OSGeo Journal Volume 2 Available
  • OSGeo Annual Meeting at FOSS4G
  • gvSIG Enters OSGeo Incubation
  • MapGuide Open Source 1.2.0 Released

October

  • OSGeo Announces Request for Proposal for Hosting 2009 Conference
  • Mapbender 2.4.3 Released

November

  • Italian Local Chapter Formed
  • OpenLayers Graduates Incubation
  • GEOS Enters OSGeo Incubation
  • Francophone Local Chapter Formed

December

  • GDAL/OGR 1.5.0 Released
  • FOSS4G Proceedings - Journal Vol. 3 Now Available
  • GRASS Book 3rd Edition Available

DRAFT financial statements for 2007 year-end are located here. These are not passed and approved by the Finance Committee yet.

THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND NOT COMPLETE

The narrative for the Financial Report section, from the Finance Committee, is under development

OSGeo's first full financial was in 2007. While there were some funds to manage in 2006, the sponsorships and other costs really started moving at the end of the year and into 2007.

Highlights from 2007

  • Dave McIlhagga was appointed Treasurer for OSGeo.
  • The Board created a Finance Committee to oversee financial activities. The group consists of: Dave McIlhagga, Jo Walsh, Paul Ramsey, Ken Tamura, Tyler Mitchell. The group uses a public mailing list for most of its discussion. (See http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/finance)

Sponsorship & Revenue

There were officially seven sponsors during 2007. Three of whom donated at the end of 2006 but four additional ones who joined throughout the 2007 calendar year. Sponsorship positions have a 1 year term and all 2006 sponsors renewed their support for another year.

  • $130,000 was from Autodesk as a special donation, giving them a Sustaining Sponsorship position
  • $20,000 came from the Supporting Sponsors: INPE and Ingres
  • $12,000 came from the Associate Sponsors: 1Spatial, First Base Solutions, LizardTech, WhereGroup

There was also significant revenue generated from annual Project Sponsorships through GDAL/OGR.

Our first year of fundraising was a success and helped sustain and surpass our financial needs for the year. Additional sponsors for the following year are already starting to come forward so our program can be extended.


More than $100,000 was raised from the FOSS4G 2007 annual event.

2007 Reports

Past Reports

THE ABOVE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND NOT COMPLETE

Committee Reports

Conference Report 2007

OSGeo Education and Curriculum Committee

Key Accomplishments

At the edu BOF meeting at FOSS4G 2007 we had 30 people in attendence. We held a second BOF where we did a "Wiki Sprint" to revise the group's web presence on the OSGeo website. At these meetings and subsequent group email discussions afterward, we came up with four major tasks for the 2007-08 year until the next FOSS4G meeting. We maintain this list at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Education_Committee_Work_Program. We are developing: (1) an inventory of existing and new educational material; (2) suggested authoring methods, content management system, and a distribution and search facility; (3) a FreeGIS book; and (4) a multi-language OSGeo dictionary. Some hightlights from these efforts to date include:

  • Discussions regarding authoring methods, content management, distribution and search facility have been on-going. Our current thinking based on group dialog:
    • Authoring methods: DocBook was proposed. While there was some support, there also was some concerns about (1) learning curve for new authors; (2) The lack of a FOSS GUI editor for DocBook; and (3) The steps involved in converting DocBook to other formats like PDF. The discussions showed that some in the group who have significant material are using LaTeX. Scribus has also been suggested. We've now concluded that the effort in 2008 needs to be open to a variety of authoring methods, but Docbook, LaTex (Lyx) and Scribus may be three that we recommend.
    • Content Management/Version Control. The OSGeo Foundation has created a Subversion repository for our use. This will be a storage facility where people can add documents and check “development versions” out for editing. A small committee is in the process of setting the system up and testing it out with the goal of developing a short tutorial to guide our authors. There will be designated “owners” or “maintainers” of educational content. This, we hope, will support building the capability for “new derivative work” based on previous content.
    • Distribution of “Production” content: We will try and utilize the OSGeo Wiki to distribute "major" versions of educational content. The idea is when a document is ready for distribution to the masses, it gets converted to pdf format and posted to the Wiki.
    • Search facility. A still open issue is building an adequate search search facility of educational material. Our inventory wiki page is getting very long already and currently there is no easy way to query for educational material (e.g., show me all the content that is related to GRASS). One important point we seem to be in agreement on is that we want to store educational material by “module” and associated course, but not just by course. This will allow future users to be able to “pick and choose” content from a variety of sources. In 2007 we investigated potential options with “module” capability, including Rice Connexions repository. But currently group members have suggested to try out the OSGeo wiki for this purpose, using “category tags.” Landon Blake offered to write a simple desktop GUI that could be used to search for OSGeo educational content. In 2008 we will be continuing to work on this, starting with the idea of using the wiki.
  • FreeGIS book
    • Víctor Olaya Ferrero, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain has been providing leadership in this edu sub-project.
    • The table of contents has been fully defined, and each chapter has at least a main author, which is responsible of it.
    • A first meeting of authors was held in Valencia in November. A date (March 4th, 2008) has been set for a new meeting, and a list of main issues to discuss has been defined.
    • So far, more than 430 pages have already been written. All the chapters have at least a brief introduction and a list of keypoints, so authors of others chapters can know its content and take it into account when writing their own ones.
    • One model that is beginning to emerge is the idea of writing articles for the OSGeo Journal that then will be added as chapters to this book. Currently Landon Blake has written a rough draft of Geospatial Metadata chapter intending to follow this model of production.
  • Multilanguage Dictionary
    • Work on the OSGeo Multilanguage Dictionary project has really just started and Landon Blake has agreed to lead this subcommittee. Several team members are planing on adding definitions to the dictionary based on their current work ().
  • OSGeo Edu and general marketing
    • Puneet Kishor (University of Wisconsin, Madison) has, over the last year, been involved in several major events where he has been promoting OSGeo edu's (and OSGeo in general) activities, including: The Science Commons Open Access Data Meeting; The US National Academies at the workshop on "Information Commons for Science"; The Brazilian workshop "Strategies for Permanent and Open Access to Scientific Data"; UNESCO Paris meeting on "Common Use Licensing of Scientific Data; Specialists Meeting on Volunteered Geographic Information" at Santa Barbara.

Areas for Improvement

  • We continue to think that there are probably opportunities connecting the Edu activities with the OSGeo projects and that we do not have an adequate inventory of educational material available in these projects. It might be helpful to have a designated person from each project be represented and active on this committee.
  • There appears to be some interest to develop develop a packaged cd for Ubuntu to launch at Foss4g2008. This seems to cross several OSGeo committees and we haven't been able to get this mobilized. We have heard that there may be some efforts already underway (perhaps by groups outside of OSGeo) toward this end.

Opportunities to Help

  • First, we can always use help on any one of the major activities listed above. In addition, more specifically, we could use help on:
    • INVENTORYING TRAINING MATERIAL NOT YET LISTED. We are pretty sure that other OSGeo-related projects have tutorials or educational material that we have not inventoried. We encourage other OSGeo participants (and others outside of OSGeo) to add their components to our Educational_Content_Inventory page. If someone would step up to take the lead in contacting each OSGeo project and ask them about relevant educational material we could list or point to, and to encourgage them to list any future material on our intentory page, that would be a great help.
    • TRANSLATIONS. In all of our existing documentation, we could use people to either translate existing tutorials into other languages other than English or by contributing new educational content, or new dictionary terms and definitions. And there is a sizable (400+ pages) written for the FreeGIS book written in Spanish, that we could use translations done into English.
    • DEVELOPING NEW EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL. If you are interested, please add an entry to our Commitments_for_New_Material_Development page.
    • DEVELOPING A SEARCH MECHANSIM. Currently, all our tutorials are listed in the wiki and typically linked to outside sources. As this list grows, we think we need better methods of finding relevant material for end users.
    • DEVELOPING THE PROCESS/SYSTEM FOR NEW DERIVATIVE WORKS. Ultimately, we are working toward a system where people can utilize and download training material and update it where deemed necessary. We haven't yet had that situation happen, but we are getting close. If someone reading this is interested in utilizing someone else's existing content listed on our Educational_Content_Inventory page, and wants to create a new derivative of the content, please contact the author of the content and copy the chair of the edu committee (Charlie Schweik ar cschweik AT pubpol DOT umass DOT edu).

Outlook for 2008

Our primary goals for the next FOSS4G conference is to have, in place:

  1. An initial set of educational material with “designated maintainers” that is open access and, at least in some instances, allows for new derivatives (Educational Content Inventory);
  2. A working content versioning system (probably Subversion-based);
  3. A system for searching educational material that will allow, as new material is added, users to find tutorial “modules” or complete courses, relatively easily;
  4. Recommended authoring tools that are easy to use and help us move forward in developing a library of educational material. We intend to accept material in any digital form, but our hope is we can develop some easy standards that will enhance the searchability of the tutorials as our library grows.
  5. Continued efforts on the Free GIS Book and OSGeo Multilanguage Dictionary;
  6. New educational material. Several OSGeo edu members are developing new teaching material and have made informal commitments to make some or all content available through the OSGeo educational collaborative.
  • These are (in no particular order):
    • Advanced Topics in Geographic Information Systems (Scott Mitchell, Carlton U., Canada. Language: English)
    • QGIS and GRASS orientation workshop (Scott Mitchell, Carlton U., Canada. Language: English)
    • Exploring and interpolating fields (Maria Antonia Brovelli, Polytechnic of Milan and Polytecnic of Zurichand and Markus Neteler, Centre for Alpine Ecology, Italy. Language: English)
    • Training Notes on Spatial Data Sharing using FOSS 2008 (Venkatesh Raghavan, Osaka City University, Japan and colleagues Shinji Masumoto, Sarawut Ninsawat, Daisuke Yoshida, Susumu Nonogaki, Willington Siabato. Language: not specified)
    • E-course on FOSS GIS (Moritz Lennert, Free University of Brussels, Belgium. Language: French)
    • Geospatial Analysis, Modeling and Visualization (title may change). (Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, USA. Language: English.)
    • Introduction to Remote Sensing using FOSS (set of modules). (Ned Horning, American Museum of Natural History, USA, and Maili Page and Charlie Schweik, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)

More detail on these efforts are listed at http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Commitments_for_New_Material_Development.

In addition, members will continue to market our edu efforts and OSGeo in general. One member, Puneet Kishor will be giving lectures at a data and management workshop in Panama City organized by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and CATHALAC, and then later in spring I will be presenting a paper at AAAS. In both events he intends to underscore the need for open geospatial data and education information

Public Geospatial Data Committee

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: David Bitner

Key Accomplishments

  • Presentations and BOF at FOSS4G2007
  • Support of Open Street Map, Open Aerial Map, and the Flight Gear Scenery Project
  • Support of pulling together imagery during San Diego fires
  • First OSGeo Educational data set available

Areas for Improvement

  • Clear mission and direction that make it clear to members and outsiders who we are and what we do
  • Work with others with similar goals so as not to reinvent the wheel
  • Partner with those who need support of our resources
  • Work more closely with Education Committee and education datasets
  • Define clear areas where volunteers can be engaged

Opportunities to Help

  • Strategic Planning -- without clear direction, it is hard to know where we can put peoples efforts to work
  • Cataloguing work - both on software setup side (GeoNetwork) and collecting metadata for public data sets
  • Open Geodata Licensing success stories - writing about how your organisation or project has moved to an open licensing approach, sharing decisions with others

Outlook for 2008

  • Revised Mission
  • Clear Directions
  • Well defined areas where volunteers can get engaged
  • A "GeoPortal" to data running on OSGeo systems

Incubation Committee

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Frank Warmerdam
  • Members: Frank Warmerdam (chair), Chris Holmes, Robert Bray, Mark Lucas, Cameron Shorter, Steve Lime, Arnulf Christl, Jody Garnett, Markus Neteler, Paul Spencer, Richard Gould, Norman Vine, Daniel Morissette, Howard Butler, Jeroen Ticheler, Julien-Samuel Lacroix

Key Accomplishments

The following projects entered incubation in 2007:

  • gvSIG
  • FDO
  • QGIS
  • GeoNetwork
  • GEOS

The following projects graduated from incubation in 2007:

The following project applications for incubation are pending:

  • GeoMOOSE
  • ORCHESTRA
  • deegree
  • JVNMobileGIS

This year we approved the Project Graduation Checklist.

Work Areas

The committee struggled with several issues this year, and will continue to work on them:

  • What degree of professional legal support should be bringing to the incubation process?
  • What key qualities do we look for in new projects?
  • Is incubation suitable for geodata projects or other kinds of projects that do not meet our normal software project expectations?
  • What support should be be providing to new projects just getting established?
  • How much should a mentor be doing to encourage a project in the incubation process?
  • Should we providing more resources, or applying additional pressure to projects that appear stalled in incubation?

Outlook for 2008

There are several projects that appear close to graduation and we see continued interest by new projects in joining OSGeo through the incubation process.

Journal

The Official Publication of OSGeo

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact Name: Tyler Mitchell, Editor-in-chief

A New Work

In late February, 2007, the OSGeo Journal was born. In total, 3 volumes of the Journal were published in 2007. The purpose of this new project was threefold but has continued to morph into much more:

  1. Present News items from across the OSGeo community
  2. Collect Case Studies showing the application of OSGeo-related (and other) technologies
  3. Introduce readers to projects, local chapters and other works in OSGeo

Key Accomplishments

This first year of the OSGeo Journal was an exploratory pilot to gauge several things. The results were highly successful, here are a few of the highlights.

Making it Real

Initially we weren’t sure how much interest there would be in reading or writing for the Journal. The concept had been tested before under the GRASS News effort. Once we started collecting articles for the first volume, we had no problem seeing that a second volume would be easy to collect content for. The third held the FOSS4G conference proceedings and this report you are reading now, is the fourth. Interest continues to grow at a pace slightly faster than we can currently meet. This is encouraging and shows great opportunities for the future.

Interest Growing

After publishing the first three volumes of the Journal, interest began to grow considerably. There has also been added interest from the academic community looking for a place to published papers that fit the goals of the Journal. This is seen as an important accomplishment because there are really no other venues of this sort available to academic authors.

Team Growing

Our team has also continued to grow. Since starting up with only a few editors, we now have more than 10 people helping in different capacities as editors, plus several others who are available to help as reviewers. We also have an editor/manager overseeing the upcoming peer review processes.

Language Translation

The Francophone Local Chapter has done a tremen- dous job translating the Journal from English into French. This is not a simple affair and was done very efficiently. It is a great compliment to have this local chapter believe enough in the value of the publica- tion to see the worth in doing this work. Thank you to the group for taking this on. We continue to try to improve the process of Journal production so that the translation can be done easily. Other language groups are always welcome to join in.

Areas for Improvement

There are several areas were we are trying to im- prove:

  • Streamline the process using the Open Journal System (OJS).
  • Involving more editors and reviewers.
  • Providing peer review opportunities.
  • Improving layout and design for more attractive printing.
  • Spreading the word about the Journal.

Opportunities to Help

You are welcome to help with any of the above areas, in particular we need help running and maintaining the OJS instance, so it can become the primary portal for the Journal. Also, the production has been funnelled, largely, through a few individuals. Opening up the process for others to help is important for the long term sustainability of the project. Editors, designers, reviewers and authors are all welcome to join. Please introduce yourself on our mailing list to show your interest.

Key Accomplishments

  • Revive and then rename "Visibility and Promotion" to "Marketing"
  • Refocus marketing strategy
  • Help organize several events
  • Help create and produce info material
  • GeoConnexion Column thanks to Michael Gerlek
  • Get Service Provider Directory under way
  • Start and maintain list of Advocacy related pages

Areas for Improvement

  • Grow team!
  • Better maintain the Events Category
  • Request for and then spend money for focused activities
  • Spawn and nurse local initiatives
  • Maybe focus more on attracting sponsors?

Opportunities to Help

  • Join the Marketing Mailing List to stay up to date on what is happening
  • Create brochures, information material and content for the Library
  • Promote OSGeo by linking to our portal page and this Wiki
  • Join the local organizing committee. Don't have one? Create it! Don't know how to? Ask the Marketing Mailing List.
  • Translate portal page and information material
  • Join regular IRC meetings
  • Add events to the Wiki. Don't know how to? Ask the Marketing Mailing List.

Outlook for 2008

  • Updated Logo for graduated projects and sponsors
  • More appearances at events
  • Create high quality brochure (under way)
  • Create communication concept for further planning of focused activities (under way)
  • Contact service providers individually to join directory and appear as sponsor

Systems Administration Committee

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Howard Butler
  • Members: Howard Butler (chair), Norman Vine, John Graham, Gary Sherman, Daniel Morissette, Martin Spott, Wolf Bergenheim, Frank Warmerdam, Shawn Barnes, Who did I forget?

Key Accomplishments

  • Completely migrated away from CollabNet and implemented our own infrastructure, which is hosted at Peer1.
  • Implemented LDAP, Trac, Subversion, Mediawiki, Mailman, Drupal, Buildbot, download server, Subversion mirror, ...

Work Areas

  • Remove the wildcard DNS entry for *.osgeo.org, which greatly complicates and limits our infrastructure maintenance.
  • Continue migrating member projects who wish to have critical infrastructure bits like Subversion and Trac be hosted by OSGeo.
  • Continue towards single sign-on goal (we have Trac, Subversion and Drupal running off LDAP, need Mediawiki, blade logins?)
  • Keep the lights on...

Outlook for 2008

OSGeo WebSite Committee

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Your Name

Key Accomplishments

  • the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period
  1. Drupal Updated (Wolf)
  2. Layout Updated (many)
  3. Many modules added: Calendar, SPD, ecc.
  4. Multiple translations ongoing
  5. ...

Areas for Improvement

  • any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help

Opportunities to Help

  • list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report

Outlook for 2008

  • this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :)
  1. Going on with translations
  2. Optimize News and Spotlight publication
  3. ...

Software Project Reports

FDO (Feature Data Objects)

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Greg Boone

Key Accomplishments

The following 4 releases of FDO were made available in 2007:

  • FDO Open Source 3.2.2 Released - July 2007
    • Improved reverse engineering of views in MySQL and ODBC
    • Upgraded filter support for Upper, Lower, Floor and Ceil functions in SDF
    • Enhanced Bounds support for GDAL Provider configuration files
    • FDO Provider Support for ArcSDE 9.2
    • Addition of the FDO KingOracle Provider
    • The complete roadmap and features of FDO 3.2.2 can be found here: http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/milestone/3.2.2.
  • FDO Open Source 3.3.0 Beta 1 Released - December 2007
    • Addition of the FDO Expression Engine
    • Addition of the PostGIS Provider
    • Continued development and release of the KingOracle Provider
    • Alpha Release of the SQL Server Spatial Provider
    • The complete roadmap and features of FDO 3.3.0 can be found here: http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/milestone/3.3.0.

FDO adoption into Third Party applications continued in 2007:

  • 1Spatial Radius Studio v1.4: 3.2.0
  • Safe Software FME® 2007: 3.2.1
  • Autodesk Map 3D 2008: 3.2.1
  • Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2008: 3.2.2
  • MapGuide Open Source 1.2.0: 3.2.3
  • A list of products using FDO can be found here

External Vendor Adoption of FDO:

  • FME® FDO Provider for AutoCAD® Map 3D 2008

Areas for Improvement

  • Implement a formalized release process.
  • While community contribution to the project is growing, most of those contributions are still on the periphery of the project. The core development on the API is still primarily fueled by developers at Autodesk. The project needs developers from the community actively working on some of the core components.
  • Getting started with FDO and the process of building new providers are still more difficult than they need to be. Enhanced documentation, tutorials and certification tools would go a long way to improving this experience.
  • A public build system for FDO would provide the community information on the state of trunk and access to daily builds of trunk.
  • Linux based builds of FDO remain more difficult than they should be. Additional work is required to the build system of FDO to make it fully FGS viable.
  • The PostGIS, King Oracle and SQL Server Spatial providers would really benefit from increased community development and support.

Opportunities to Help

All contributions and help is welcome, but in particular:

  • Develop a new FDO provider for your currently unsupported format
  • Help work on the PostGIS, KingOracle and SQL Server Spatial Providers
  • Refine the website navigation and site structure.
  • Develop and refine help and documentation, in particular a getting started tutorial.
  • Enhance the Linux build system and complete the FGS package work.
  • Testing and quality bug reports.

Outlook for 2008

2007 was a gret year for the FDO project. Considerable momentum has grown around the development community. The community hopes to keep this momentum going in 2008. Community contribution continues to grow at a steady pace, and we believe the 3.3.0 release will spark even more enthusiasm and collaboration. Finally with a little effort and support we believe the number of external developers contributing to the core code base will start to increase.

Expected Major 2008 Milestones:

  • Graduate OSGeo Incubation: Febuary 2008
  • Final Release of FDO 3.3.0: March 2008
  • Final Release of SQL Server Spatial Provider for 3.3.0 and 3.2.3
  • Continued enhacements to the feature set of the PostGIS Provider
  • Continued development towards a service pack release of FDO 3.3.1 and beyond
  • Continued development of new Data Providers for FDO
  • Enahcements to the FDO API as discussed on the FDO Futures Discussion Page

GDAL/OGR report external at http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/AnnualReport2007

GRASS Project Steering Committee 2007 Annual Report

This report is a summary of activities undertaken by the GRASS-PSC. It is expected that portions of this document will be included in the OSGeo Annual Report, and this document is not meant to be entirely inclusive.

Report Period

  • This report covers the period of November 1st, 2006 until December 31st, 2007.
  • Contact name: Markus Neteler
  • PSC Members: Michael Barton, Dylan Beaudette, Hamish Bowman, Massimiliano Cannata, Brad Douglas, Paul Kelly, Helena Mitasova, Scott Mitchell, Markus Neteler, Maciej Sieczka

Formation Motion

The GRASS-PSC was formally convened on September 11, 2006, with Markus Neteler being appointed chair. David Sampson is acknowledged for pushing on the formation of the GRASS-PSC. Guidelines for the operation of the PSC and its formal connection to the GRASS project were extensively discussed for a number of months and formally adopted on 6 April 2007.

2006 Activities

  • 20 Dec 2006: GRASS GIS / OSGeo Newsletter Published - The first combined GRASS-News / OSGeo-News volume is available
  • 12 Dec 2006: GRASS 6.2.1 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.0 source code
  • GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to S. Pallecchi (granted, 12 Dec 2006)
  • GRASS-PSC: PSC Chair motion (chair: M Neteler, 9 Dec 2006, see related email message)
  • GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to R. Antolin (granted, 8 Dec 2006)
  • RFC 2: Legal aspects of code contributions (adopted 8 Dec 2006)
  • 06 Dec 2006: GRASS 6.2.1RC1 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.0 source code
  • 31 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0 released - The stable version is published: Source code available now, packaged installers for major platforms are currently being built and will follow shortly
  • 24 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC3 released - The last release candidate
  • 06 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC2 released - Approaching the final release
  • 26 Sep 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC1 released - The first release candidate
  • 18 Sep 2006: GRASS 6.2.0beta3 released - The last beta version

Early to Mid 2007 Activities

  • Summer: participation in Google Summer of Code 2007 (Under the OSGeo umbrella) with two projects (now in the main release)
  • GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to P. Marcondes for PT translations (granted, 2 June 2007)
  • 26 Jul 2007: GRASS 5.4.1 released - Courtesy release containing several bug fixes for legacy users
  • 16 Jul 2007: GRASS 6.2.2 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.1 source code
  • 29 May 2007: GRASS 6.2.2RC1 released - Bugfix release candidate
  • RFC 1: Project Steering Committee Guidelines (extensively discussed and adopted 6 April 2007)
  • Italian GRASS and GFOSS Users Meeting - GRASS and GFOSS Users Meeting, Palermo (Italy), 14-16 Feb 2007
  • 12 Feb 2007: New GRASS bug and wish tracker - Gforge based
  • 10 Feb 2007: GRASS GIS 6.2.1 winGRASS/Cygwin binaries available - download package

Mid to Late 2007 Activities

  • OSGeo "incubation" process (GRASS Incubation Progress): almost completed, waiting for mentors approval to reach graduation
  • Migration to OSGeo source code and bug tracker infrastructure (after many years successful hosting by Intevation GmbH)
  • 30 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC3 released - Technology preview release candidate 3
  • 27 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.2.3 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.2 source code
  • 20 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC2 released - Technology preview release candidate 2
  • 24 Oct 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC1 released - Technology preview release candidate
  • 21 Oct 2007: GRASS 6.2.3RC1 released - Bugfix release candidate
  • 24-27 Sep 2007: progress report, workshop and several talks presented at FOSS4G2007
  • 19 Sep 2007: OSGeo Journal Volume 2 Published - The second volume of the new Journal
  • 15 Aug 2007: test version of a new data set (Spearfish replacement) released

User statistics

  • End of 2007, more than 4000 subscribers were counted in the various GRASS mailing lists.
Registered GRASS users
Registered GRASS users

Future strategy

Establish GRASS as GIS backbone, especially for other OSGeo projects.

GeoNetwork opensource

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Jeroen Ticheler and Francois Prunayre

Key Accomplishments

We made progress on incubation during the year 2007 and the following release of GeoNetwork opensource was made available in 2007:

  • GeoNetwork opensource 2.1 (September 2007)
    • New user interface based on Ajax and including Intermap as a web map client
    • New harvesting mechanism (supporting WebDav, OAI-PMH, Z39.50, CSW)
    • Support for opensearch client
    • Bug fixes from 2.0

Events:

  • Lab at FOSS4G2007 (September 2007)
  • GeoNetwork opensource workshop in Roma/FAO (November 2007)
    • User workshop
    • Define principles to pass the OSGeo Incubation process
    • PSC election

GeoNetwork opensource community website and trac moved to OSGeo infrastructure

Many, many new participants:

  • 200+ subscribers to developers list
  • 300+ subscribers to users list

Outlook for 2008

  • OSGeo Incubation process
  • Improve documentation (migration to DocBook)
  • Create synergies with other SDI components (e.g. GeoServer, Talend Spatial Data Integrator, ArcCatalog)
  • Improve modularity and work on new user interface to be embedded in existing website

The GEOS project is pleased to have been accepted into incubation! Find all details on the GEOS Incubation Status Wiki Page. At FOSS4G 2007, members of the GEOS community met, and decided to move the project under the OSGeo umbrella. Since then, the bug tracking and code repositories have been moved to OSGeo, and we are moving into the next stages of incubation: selecting a project steering committee, establishing the ground rules for decision making, and reviewing the GEOS code base for intellectual property issues. GEOS should be a great addition to OSGeo, with lots of strong corporate support and wide use throughout the geospatial software ecosystem!

Project Name

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: [User:Jive]

Key Accomplishments

  • An amazing amount of software at FOSS4G was built around the GeoTools library; we were very happy with the community presence at this event
  • We had a 3 day long code sprint after FOSS4G in which we switched over to Java 5 an the GeoAPI feature model. This is the end of a three years of development, months of careful planning and review prior to the even allowed this change to go smoothly.
  • Adrian Custer performed an exhaustive check into what is needed to assign copyright to the OSGeo Foundation, this has allowed us to resume discussions with the OSGeo board.
  • Jody Garnett has started putting together a user guide for the library
  • The introduction of an unsupported directly has revitalized the community; allowing us to capture and share a lot of research work traditionally has been done around the GeoTools library. As an example Eclisia has started making swing widgets around the GeoTools abstractions; something each group of developers has traditionally done in isolation.

Areas for Improvement

  • We made no progress on incubation during the year as we waited for a way forward; this seems to be resolved for 2008
  • We have no time to talk to other Java developer communities, there is a lot of code duplication in this space (and several forks of the GeoTools code)
  • The burden of keeping a build box going for such an active community is punishing
  • Svn access has had bouts of downtown; we are clearning up the repository (of large test data) and considering moving to a newer version of svn on OSGeo hardware. Developers have started playing with distributed version control.
  • There are more answers going by on the user list than are being captured in the user guide; additional help jotting down code examples would be welcome

Opportunities to Help

List areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report:

  • Please try out the User Guide and give us feedback; we want to make sure the you can start hacking

Outlook for 2008

This is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :)

GeoTools is looking forward to making 2008 the best year yet. There is lots of exciting development now underway - from embracing Java 5, to rolling our WFS 1.1 support. 2008 will see the long expected return of swing widgets to the GeoTools library.

GeoTools 2.4.0 is available now and marks the last Java 1.4 release of the library.

gvSIG Annual Report

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Jorge Sanz

Key Accomplishments

  • Releases:
    • 1.0.1 (4 of January)
    • jCRS and geoBD pilots (21 and 22 of Febrary)
    • 1.0.2 (9 of May)
    • SEXTANTE 0.1 (7 of June)
    • Network pilot (27 of June)
    • 1.1.0 (21 of October)
    • Raster pilot (10 of December)
    • 1.1.1 (21 of December)
  • gvSIG has joined the SEXTANTE project, adding to gvSIG a powerful and extensible framework to create easily raster and vectorial algorithms. Nowadays SEXTANTE adds to gvSIG almost 200 algorithms.
  • gvSIG has been translated into many languages, and the web site is now offered in English and Chinese besides Spanish and Valencian languages.
  • Some developers and managers presented at FOSS4G2007 in Victoria (Canada) current and near features, as the 3D extension and gvSIG for mobile devices.
  • The 3rd gvSIG meeting was a succesful event, with more than 500 attendees from many countries, presenting project advances, new applications and projects using gvSIG as underlying technology as well as other FOSS4G projects like Geonetwork Open Source.
  • gvSIG has entered into OSGeo incubation as a way to improve the relationship of the project with the community and other FOSS4G projects


3rd gvSIG attendance by country
3rd gvSIG attendance by country

Downloads

These are approximate numbers about gvSIG releases downloads during 2007:

Releases Downloads Pilots Downloads
0.6 421 Network 600
1.0 23.000 Raster 1800
1.0.1 6.500 geoDB 1900
1.0.2 11.800 ArcIMS 400
1.1 17.700 jCRS 738
1.1.1 300

Areas for Improvement

  • The collaborative infrastructure needs to be improved, allowing community to interact with the project in a more efficient way.
  • The user, and specially, the developer documentation has to be on the website not only as PDFs.
  • Keep the organization more in touch with the community, giving information about the technical and organizational decisions, ongoing projects, and so on.
  • Improve the use of the English language to foster the communication with non Spanish community.
  • Improve the communication channels with other FOSS4G projects to find common approaches for tools, procedures, etc.

Opportunities to Help

gvSIG related projects by sector and geographical scope
gvSIG related projects by sector and geographical scope
  • Discuss on the mailing lists!
  • Test and send bugs
  • Propose new features for gvSIG
  • Translate the application and the documentation and many other materials
  • Write successful (or not) use cases
  • Sponsor the gvSIG meeting
  • Offer training with gvSIG
  • Develope new plugins


Outlook for 2008

Number of people related with the project by year (total 457)
Number of people related with the project by year (total 457)
Known countries where gvSIG is beeing used
Known countries where gvSIG is beeing used
  • Publish the new portal for the gvSIG project with:
    • Complete user and developer documentation (first in Spanish, later in English and other languages)
    • Community support (howto's, mailing lists, planet, ...)
    • Support for gvSIG internationalization
    • News and events related with gvSIG and other FOSS4G projects
    • Information about new gvSIG developments and releases
    • ...
  • Create a new organization that will support and strength the gvSIG project
  • Start a training program for gvSIG
  • Publish first releases of:
    • 3D support
    • Raster and remote sensing capabilities
    • Metadata handling capabilities
    • gvSIG Mobile
    • Web publishing extension
    • New topology and geoprocessing capabilities
    • Advanced symbology
    • More SDI integration: WPS client
    • Advanced editing
  • Start working on new features:
    • 4D support
    • Geostatistics
    • Surveying
    • Sensor web

MapGuide report external at: http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/OSGeoAnnualReport2007

Project Name = MapServer

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Steve Lime

Key Accomplishments

  • Transformed the MapServer Technical Steering Committee (TSC) into the MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) (see RFC-23)
  • Added four new members to the PSC
  • Three maintenance releases of MapServer 4.10
  • Migrated significant portions of MapServer project infrastructure, specifically CVS and Bugzilla, from the University of Minnesota to OSGeo infrastructure (SVN and Trac) in April 2007
  • Implemented a buildbot
  • Released MapServer 5.0 in early September 2007 closing more than 200 tickets. Key features include:
    • Support for the AGG rendering engine
    • Label prioritization control
    • Style and label attribute binding
    • Dynamic charting capabilities
    • Raster color correction via color lookup table
    • Dynamic allocation for most statically allocated elements (e.g. layers, classes and styles)
    • Improved memory management and garbage collection for MapScript
    • Enhanced debug/logging capabilies

Areas for Improvement

  • OSGeo incubation process was slow, primarily limited to infrastructure migration from UMN to OSGeo.
  • Like most projects, keeping documentation up-to-date with development remains a challenge.
  • There was little or no time for collaboration with other similar (e.g. MapNik, GeoServer, MapGuide) projects although I guess this is only natural given the other demands of working on a project.
  • The MapServer development team did a poor job representing the new release of MapServer (5.0) at the FOSS4G conference in Victoria.

Opportunities to Help

  • list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report

Outlook for 2008

  • this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :)

Key Accomplishments

OSSIM has continued to evolve as additional tools, applications and web solutions have been developed with the core C++ library. The key contributors of the project have been working on US Government projects that have been responsible for many of the new tools and capabilities. Most of the recent work has focused on ossimPlanet and OMAR.

ossimPlanet is an accurate 3D global visualization client that emphasizes native file access, navigation and data synchronization between clients and servers, and event driven alerts. This client is being used by several government projects and contractors as well as high end visualization systems located at CALIT2 and the Arizona State University Decision Theater. 

Image:DCChurch.jpg  
Urban Models with ossimPlanet (Washington DC)

Image:KoreaOverview.jpg
Mosaic of Korea with ossimPlanet

OMAR is a web based ossim service that rapidly provides new products to end users.

Areas for Improvement

OSSIM is currently in incubation awaiting final graduation. Work is continuing on documenting the wiki and improving the communications from the Program Steering Committee to the developer list.

OpenLayers

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Chris Schmidt and Erik Uzureau

Key Accomplishments

  • Graduated from OSGeo incubation
  • Three major releases in 2007
    • 2.3:
      • Bug fixes from 2.2 release
      • Improvements in tile handling
      • Support for TMS
    • 2.4:
      • Vector drawing support
      • Improved event handling framework
      • New editing controls
    • 2.5:
      • Additional format support: KML, GeoRSS, GeoJSON
      • More vectorization tools
      • Better third party API integration
      • Improved system for developer documentation
  • Many, many new participants:
    • 250+ subscribers to developers list
    • 550+ subscribers to users list
    • Over 110 users manually signed up for TRAC accounts
  • Integration of OpenLayers into existing toolkits: MapBuilder, Fusion, and MapFish

Areas for Improvement

  • Plan to migrate to OSGeo infrastructure for SVN/Trac
  • Process to become a committer better defined (add more committers, add reviewer role, etc.)
  • Better documentation, memory handling
  • Continue to expand support for existing Geo standards.

Opportunities to Help

  • Case Studies: Why are you using OpenLayers? What do you gain by using it over other tools?
  • Examples:
  • Documentation: Prose text describing how to perform a series of steps to achieve a goal in OpenLayers, to add to the existing developer documentation and examples
  • Improved interaction with current users of proprietary software to understand and target their needs, including (but not limited to):
    • Possibly developing support for ESRI-specific map requests like ArcXML
    • Improved documentation on how to transition from proprietary software to OpenLayers

Outlook for 2008

In 2008, OpenLayers is poised to continue on its current trend of taking geographic information to the web. With support for new geographic formats and servers, improved performance, and web browsers becoming more and more commonly used as the sole client to access datasets, OpenLayers has placed itself in a strong growth position. Patches and contributions are arriving from around the globe, from contributors on 5 different continents.

In 2008, expect to see wider usage of OpenLayers as the project becomes more widely used and better documented. Already, we have seen major governmental organizations take up OpenLayers as the sole public API to their data, preferring the open source project to commercial ventures such as Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft's offerings. With this trend, it is likely that users can expect to see continued usage leading to wider support for different browsers, improved functionality, and more in 2008.

Quantum GIS

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Gary Sherman

Key Accomplishments

  • Released versions 0.8, 0.8.1, 0.9, and 0.9.1
  • The refactoring of libraries (starting at 0.8) allows the development of standalone GIS applications using the QGIS API
  • Version 0.9 introduced Python bindings, opening up QGIS development to a larger audience
  • Improved project management by establishing roles with the Project Steering Committee (PSC):
    • Release Manager
    • Technical Advisor
    • Community Advisor
    • Financial/Marketing Advisor
  • Entered OSGeo incubation in February
  • Funds management was transferred to OSGeo

Areas for Improvement

  • any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help
  • The QGIS project continues to improve its internal processes for development and release of packages.
  • There are a number of key shortcomings (labeling, map composition) that need to be addressed for the release of version 1.0 in 2008

Opportunities to Help

  • QGIS is in need of additional developers to close existing bugs and implement new features.

Outlook for 2008

  • this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :)
  • Version 1.0 will be released in 2008, providing a stable API for the development of both C++ and Python applications

MapGuide Open Source Report 2007

Mapbender

Retrieved from http://www.mapbender.org/Annual_report_2007

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
  • Contact name: Christoph Baudson, christoph@osgeo.org

Key Accomplishments

(the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period)

quality assurance

  • increased the percentage of re-usable code by switching from script-oriented to object-oriented design
  • since 02/07: well-used bug tracking system Trac supplied by OSGeo (163 tickets up to now), supplement of patches for bugs.
  • since 03/07: well-defined release proceedings, releases on a regular basis (at least 4 releases per year)
  • 12/07: optimization of Mapbender's load process: it now loads 4-5 times as fast.
  • since 04/07: growing HTML API of JavaScript and PHP classes, for example https://svn.osgeo.org/mapbender/trunk/documents/jsdoc/index.html
  • 01/07: establishment of coding conventions, see http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Code_conventions

community building

  • since 03/07: regular, productive weekly IRC meetings, see logs at http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/IRC_Meeting
  • 05/07: development sprint with around 20 participants
  • since 01/07: integration of several new developers outside of the core team (Michael Schulz, Marc Jansen, Marko Samson etc)
  • since 07/07: development of internationalisation techniques (in collaboration with italian developers)
  • multi-language documentation at www.mapbender.org


Areas for Improvement

(any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help)

  • enhance international outreach, address more people outside Germany (or Europe)
  • develop an easy-to-use update routine
  • integration of OSGeo software, like OpenLayers
  • despite having an opportunity to host demos at Telascience, a machine with better connection to Europe might be desirable. The server is very slow here.

Opportunities to Help

(list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report)

  • Wiki: Request for an Account and add your web application to the Gallery or help on the documentation
  • Contribute your set of buttons to make Mapbender look better
  • Offer service around Mapbender, there is still a lot of commercial potential
  • Join development by throwing code over the fence or joining the core development team. We need people who have fun creating Web 2.0 style interfaces and have a hand for design work
  • Fund core development by sponsoring

Outlook for 2008

(this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :))

  • release of Mapbender 2.5, featuring i18n, KML support, optimized code etc.
  • stabilise and enhance input/output of standardized formats like WMS, WFS, WMC, GeoJSON, KML
  • continue to work on re-design to allow interoperation with state-of-the-art software
  • WFS FilterEncoding interface - this means that you can query geographic objects for spatial and attribute data
  • SLD Editor
  • Install / Setup script
  • Catalog connectors
  • Enhanced update functionality
  • new interfaces (badly needed, we still look like from the late nineties...)

Maybe (depending on interest - so ask for it!)

  • OpenLayers as alternative map interface
  • FeatureServer support
  • Tile cache support

OSGeo participation in Google Summer of Code 2007

by Wolf Bergenheim

Last summer, from May 1st 2007 to August 31st 2007, OSGeo participated in the Google Summer of Code. This article sums up that experience and gives a short presentation of each Summer of Code project.

What is SoC?

Quoting Google FAQ

Google Summer of Code TM is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Google will be working with a several open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Historically, the program has brought together over 1,000 students with over 100 open source projects, to create hundreds of thousands of lines of code. The program, which kicked off in 2005, is now in its third year, following on from a very successful 2006.
While the majority of past student participants were enrolled in university Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs, GSoCers come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from computational biology to mining engineering. Many of our past participants had never participated in an open-source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Several of our 2005 students went on to become mentors in 2006.

What projects participated?

First of I'd like to congratulate the students on a job well done. A lot of cool and very usefull projects were completed in SoC 2007. We did loose a student or two, who were overtaken by other priorities. But the overall success of projects is something we should be proud of. Good work! Hope SoC 2008 will be at least as good.

Now on to present the Projects of Summer 2007.

GDAL

GDAL2Tiles

Student: Klokan Petr Pridal Mentor: Howard Butler

This project is to allow easy publishing of raster maps on the Internet. Raster maps (like TIFF/GeoTIFF, MrSID, ECW, JPEG2000, JPEG, PNG) are converted into a directory structure of small PNG tiles (TMS compatible), which can be copied to a webserver. Simple webpages with viewers based on Google Maps and OpenLayers are also generated as well. This tool makes publishing even large maps without needing to install or configure any special software (like mapserver) and the map displays very fast in the webbrowser. GDAL2Tiles also generates necessary metadata for Google Earth (KML SuperOverlay), if the supplied map uses EPSG:4326 projection. The gdalwarp utility can be used to convert raster maps with another projection. World files and embedded georeference is used during tile and KML generation, but proper georeference is not mandatory.

Tile structure follows recommendation from OSGeo Tile Map Service Specification

Manual page for utility is part of the solution, as well as a document describing several existing tile structures with links to further documentation. Analysis of rotated SuperOverlay KML is done as well.

For more info look at the project page

This project was accepted by GDAL community as ticket #1763. This utility is distributed with the new stable version of GDAL 1.5.0.

KML read support for the existing driver

Student: Mateusz Loskot Mentor: Jens Oberender

This project added KML vector read support.

For more information read Wiki page

This project is included in the new version 1.5.0 of OGR

Web Map Services GDAL driver

Student Adam Nowacki Mentor: Daniel Morissette

Development of a OGC Web Map Services GDAL driver, with support for the following Web Map Services:

  • OGC WMS and WMS-C cache
  • WorldWind TileService

The new driver has been included in the official GDAL codebase and included in the 1.5.0 release. Driver documentation is available and the Wiki page hase more information.

This project is included in the new version 1.5.0 of OGR

GRASS

v.generalize

Student: Daniel Bundala Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim

v.generalize is a project which does line simplification as described by McMaster. The original plan was to implement Douglas-Peucker and a few more line simplification algorithms. Daniel Bundala (the student) surprised his mentor by working a lot more efficiently and as a result GRASS 6.3 now includes a brand new generalization module which is capable of not only simplification but also smoothing and displacement. There is also a method for network simplification in the module.

For more information see the module documentation

v.generalize is included in the new 6.3.0 release of GRASS (as of RC4).

The module has also been used to substantially speed-up and improve quality of interpolation from contour data when computing digital elevation models.

v.net.visibility

Student: Maximilian Maldacker Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim

v.net.visibility builds a visibility network around some obstacles. The created network can then be further analyzed with existing v.net.* modules. It can also be merged with an existing network, like a road network, and this enable plotting shortest paths beyond an existing road network, say for emergency vehicles.

For more information see the module documentation

v.net.visibility is included in the new 6.3.0 release of GRASS (as of RC4)

uDig

Caching data

Student: Christophe Rousson Mentor: Ian Turton

A feature cache. A RAM cache might use the LRU algorithm and have a maximum amount of RAM to consume setting. A local disk cache and local disk cache might use a size-only and/or maximum age based algorithm. Ideally as items fall out of RAM, they would be written to disk. At session close, remaining items in RAM would also be written to disk (much like Google Earth). Upon startup, cache could be polled to see if anything already exists within the current spatial window (if it hasn't expired).

For more information see the data Wiki page

This project is on the trunk/development version of uDig.